Semiconductor components are conventionally made from circular wafers of silicon having a thickness of approximately 0.015 inches and a diameter of from 2 to 3 inches. Each wafer of silicon is sliced from a bole of silicon which has been drawn from a melt of molten silicon in a crucible. The sliced wafers are polished and then areas of diffusion and layers of insulation and metallization are deposited on the surface thereof by photolithographic techniques, so as to form each of a plurality of chip components in a rectilinear array. The wafer, with the rectilinear array of rectangular chip components, is then passed through a dicing operation using a diamond saw. Conventionally, a diamond saw blade cuts a kerf having a depth which is some fraction of the total thickness of the wafer. The rectilinear array of kerfs define the plurality of respective components making up the wafer. The component chips on the pre-scored wafer, are ready to be separated from one another by a wafer breaking process.
Prior art wafer breaking apparatus include the use of a simple cylindrical roller which is rolled across the back of the wafer in a manual operation. Another prior art apparatus includes a single hemisphere having a diameter substantially the same as that of the wafer, which is juxtaposed with the wafer. The wafer is then forced over the hemisphere thereby imparting breaks along the prescored line of the wafer. Still another prior art apparatus for breaking the wafer involves enveloping the wafer between two flexible sheets and pressing the wafer against a single hemispherical contour having a diameter substantially the same as that of the wafer. All of the prior art apparatus and techniques employed to break wafers have disadvantages. A particularly outstanding disadvantage of the prior art is the failure to break away the peripheral selvage which must be manually removed by the operator in existing wafer breaking machines. Such intervention by the operator introduces a source of contamination to wafer surface, slows the operation of breaking pre-scored the wafer, and reduces the possibility of automating the wafer breaking process.